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So it’s the 14th July 2012 and I'm not really sure if it's first thing Saturday morning, midday or sometime in the afternoon; time travel will do that... but I do know I'm half way in my mammoth flight with seven hours to kill in Canton before embarking on the next torturous leg.
Seven hours I thought, that's heaps of time, hope the hotel they're putting me up in has a pool and great food, well noodles at least... and interesting fellow transit-travelers.... hmmmm, wrong on all accounts.
Firstly, it took over three hours in painful queues with the over-bearing need to go to the loo increasing and the fact that I was over-dressed becoming more and more obvious as the smog-induced tropical temperatures crept into no-mans-land, namely the transit queues of Canton Airport.
After those said three painful hours and finally in the hotel, I was handed a key swipey thingy with the room number handwritten on it and headed up to my room.
By this stage, I was so hot, and busting, and over it, all I could think was to get all my Melbourne winter clothes off as soon as humanly possible.
So I achieved that and also used the loo, hand washed my smalls in the bathroom sink and lay down on the bed to read the hotel menu to see if they mentioned that pool; I didn’t want to shower if I was going swimming first!
Well, I'm lying (facedown thankfully) on the bed with my head around the corner from the door and arse in clear view when the door opens, someone kind of shrieks, apologizes and quickly closes it.
Now most sensible people would think, 'hmmm, someone just entered my room while I was lying on the bed nude, I should probably put some clothes on and figure out why that happened...'
But I wasn’t in a sensible state, after not really sleeping and crossing a couple of time zones, not to mention being dehydrated and just too damn hot; so all I did was go and lock the door properly, (I thought all hotel doors lock automatically, apparantly not; lesson learnt!) and go back to lie down and finish reading the catalogue, still no mention of the pool that was suuuuuuuuuuuuuuure to exist!
After a couple of minutes, there's another knock on the door, better than a walk-in I guess and I was forced to ram my sweaty body into some clothes and open it. The Chinese staff had to use Pictionary, charades and power of the finger point to explain that I was in the wrong room and mine was the next one down the hall. Great!
I grabbed my things and shamefully sauntered as quickly as possible, I didn’t want to run into whom ever had suffered the misfortune of being exposed to my bare, white arse and closed the door fast.... but unfortunately, the poor staff had to interrupt me again to tell me I'd left my wet underwear hanging in the shower and had to go collect. God, the humiliation.
Needless to say, I managed to get everything back, hid in my room till I could stand the moldy walls no longer and spent the day wandering the cigarette-packet, rotting mango and general rubbish laid streets carefully avoiding any contact with potential springers. even going as far as catching an early bus back to the airport, just because I loooooooooove the place so much. BTW, there was no pool.
Another three hours of queues and finally I'm on my flight to Amsterdam. It's somehow 11pm again, (where did like four hours go??!!) and I'm actually relieved to be sitting in a cattle-classical little seat away from the smog, away from the pollution and away from anyone that saw just a little too much of me today and may be under the impression that a particular room in that hotel comes with a few extras, for the bargain price of .... well free... one doesn’t want to set one's standards too high now...
Seven hours I thought, that's heaps of time, hope the hotel they're putting me up in has a pool and great food, well noodles at least... and interesting fellow transit-travelers.... hmmmm, wrong on all accounts.
Firstly, it took over three hours in painful queues with the over-bearing need to go to the loo increasing and the fact that I was over-dressed becoming more and more obvious as the smog-induced tropical temperatures crept into no-mans-land, namely the transit queues of Canton Airport.
After those said three painful hours and finally in the hotel, I was handed a key swipey thingy with the room number handwritten on it and headed up to my room.
By this stage, I was so hot, and busting, and over it, all I could think was to get all my Melbourne winter clothes off as soon as humanly possible.
So I achieved that and also used the loo, hand washed my smalls in the bathroom sink and lay down on the bed to read the hotel menu to see if they mentioned that pool; I didn’t want to shower if I was going swimming first!
Well, I'm lying (facedown thankfully) on the bed with my head around the corner from the door and arse in clear view when the door opens, someone kind of shrieks, apologizes and quickly closes it.
Now most sensible people would think, 'hmmm, someone just entered my room while I was lying on the bed nude, I should probably put some clothes on and figure out why that happened...'
But I wasn’t in a sensible state, after not really sleeping and crossing a couple of time zones, not to mention being dehydrated and just too damn hot; so all I did was go and lock the door properly, (I thought all hotel doors lock automatically, apparantly not; lesson learnt!) and go back to lie down and finish reading the catalogue, still no mention of the pool that was suuuuuuuuuuuuuuure to exist!
After a couple of minutes, there's another knock on the door, better than a walk-in I guess and I was forced to ram my sweaty body into some clothes and open it. The Chinese staff had to use Pictionary, charades and power of the finger point to explain that I was in the wrong room and mine was the next one down the hall. Great!
I grabbed my things and shamefully sauntered as quickly as possible, I didn’t want to run into whom ever had suffered the misfortune of being exposed to my bare, white arse and closed the door fast.... but unfortunately, the poor staff had to interrupt me again to tell me I'd left my wet underwear hanging in the shower and had to go collect. God, the humiliation.
Needless to say, I managed to get everything back, hid in my room till I could stand the moldy walls no longer and spent the day wandering the cigarette-packet, rotting mango and general rubbish laid streets carefully avoiding any contact with potential springers. even going as far as catching an early bus back to the airport, just because I loooooooooove the place so much. BTW, there was no pool.
Another three hours of queues and finally I'm on my flight to Amsterdam. It's somehow 11pm again, (where did like four hours go??!!) and I'm actually relieved to be sitting in a cattle-classical little seat away from the smog, away from the pollution and away from anyone that saw just a little too much of me today and may be under the impression that a particular room in that hotel comes with a few extras, for the bargain price of .... well free... one doesn’t want to set one's standards too high now...
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